Elon Musk hinting at Mars plans – #MuskOnMars

June 5, 2016

Earlier this week Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX was at the ReCode conference talking about many things. One of those was a hint at what the SpaceX Mars architecture will start to look like. We listen to a small snippet of that conference and discuss. You can watch the full interview here.

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This time around Elon might be able to stay on timeline for four reasons: 1) He could be using hardware that’s already developed (by that time). 2) He could use recovered first stages so the launches to Mars could be relativy cheap. 3) He doesn’t have to wait for customers to foot the bill. These aren’t commercial flights. 4) NASA could be paying a significant portion for payloads to Mars.

I’ve watched the Recode bit and I believe the segment you posted is slightly out of context. The two interviewers were really incompatible and their focus was to get “breaking news” answers, which they pressured poor Musk for. Under duress, Elon said that the schedule is to be able to send humans to Mars in 2024, but he didn’t commit to actually send any or then to make them land. If everything goes to plan – and we know it won’t – then by 2024 SpaceX will be able to do what they planned to be able to do. That is not revealing anything, it’s a truism. Musk was very insistent on the 26 month periodic windows and I can see why he would plan to send a test flight then, lest he wastes a very valuable window. To me it was more interesting that he is definitely setting up biyearly trips to Mars, whether with cargo or humans, as a regular service. Suddenly, Mars One doesn’t seem so hopeless anymore. Also very interesting was him skirting the question of whether he would first test the system by sending humans to the Moon. To me even the most direct plan is to first send a crew capsule to Mars, empty of people but filled with sensors to check if it is safe enough, one which would probably go around Mars, but never land. Landing would be tested with the cargo capsule, at least one, but probably close to 10. Then the manned mission would follow. Assuming everything goes to plan – which we know… anyway – then it’s at least 11 years before they can even embark on a manned maiden voyage to land on Mars.

They where talking about “something bigger than the Saturn 5” for the first Mars Colonial Transport System in the launch window for 2014. So Musk must have something bigger in mind than the Falcon Heavy…